Tag Archives: legal

Napster Is Back Again

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You Read It Here First - Napster Is Coming Back From The Dead

I announced the return of MySpace just last week, and now I find that an even more emblematic service is trying to slip back into the public eye. I’m talking about Napster, one of the most widely-discussed P2P filesharing platforms ever.

“What do you mean ‘slip back into the public eye’? Wasn’t the service dead and gone for good?”, I hear you retort. To which I have to reply, “no, it wasn’t”.

You see, although Napster’s days as a filesharing service were over by July 2001 (when the service was forced to close down after a much-publicized legal dispute with the RIAA), the name “Napster” has changed owners a good couple of times. One of these was Roxio, which relaunched Napster as a 100% legal music service shortly after it was originally closed. It was all to no avail, and most people never noticed. To them, Napster sank from sight when it stopped being a place to get music for free. Period.

But Napster’s latest owners are intent on reclaiming some of the fire the service had on its P2P glory days.

Napster has just been acquired by Rhapsody for an undisclosed sum, and it is to be relaunched as an on-demand service letting users listen to all the music they want in exchange for a monthly subscription. Continue reading →

Music Matters – Combating Piracy In A Fair Way

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MusicMatters
Name: Music Matters
URL: http://www.whymusicmatters.org

Weighing the pros and the cons of the Internet and the way it has modified how music is consumed always boils down to two arguments. On the plus side, artists nobody would hear about otherwise are brought recognition beyond their wildest dreams. On the down side, music is pirated left, right and center because the act of downloading an album (not to mention a mere song) seems innocuous.

When companies try to impose a solution, they invariably add fuel to the fire. The attempt to close the Pirate Bay had the opposite effect – the number of torrent trackers shot through the roof. It has always been the same all through history – something is prohibited, and people just do it three times more. Just think of the US in 1920, when the Dry Law was enforced.

The best course of action to me should be simply to remind people that what they are doing is wrong without sounding patronizing, and without doling an actual punishment. Because in 8 out of 10 cases these punishments end up affecting those who did go by the rules. Continue reading →